WORKS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION MOUSTIERS CERAMICS GIFTS FROM THE EUGENE V. AND CLARE E. THAW COLLECTION AUGUST 2, 2017 – JANUARY 2 1, 2019 1 industry in France, at Vincennes and then Sèvres, fell under royal patronage and the porcelain created MOUSTIERS there was not available for purchase. These decorated tin-glazed earthenware ceramics were clearly sought after in their day, as is evidenced by the signatures CERAMICS often found on the wares. They also held an irresistible appeal to collectors starting in the early twentieth FROM THE EUGENE V. century, when eighteenth-century French style was seen as the height of design, for the charm of colorful, AND CLARE E. THAW often amusing depictions of figures and flowers. COLLECTION The combination of engraved decorative print sources and the connection with textile motifs has been observed by Rebekah Pollock, a graduate of Cooper Hewitt/Parsons School of Design master’s program in This booklet accompanies an exhibition celebrating the History of Design and Curatorial Studies and the the gift of a substantial collection of Moustiers scholar who wrote this booklet’s essay. She shows the ceramics from the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw links between Moustiers ceramics and broader French collection, given to Cooper Hewitt from 2006 to 2017. decorative arts using objects in Cooper Hewitt’s other The Thaws received their first piece of Moustiers curatorial departments, making the case for how ceramics as a wedding present from someone whose important cross-disciplinary connections are in the taste and knowledge they admired, and they set out to design field, and how proximity of such collections at explore the varieties of ornament, form, and function the museum helps to make these connections. produced in the town of Moustiers Sainte-Marie, a town in the Alpine area in the southeast of France. We are very grateful to the Eugene V. and Clare E. Their gift to the museum has enabled an in-depth Thaw Charitable Trust for the underwriting of this study of the earthenware, both in materials and in brochure, and for the Thaws’ generosity in giving a context. Moustiers ceramics are not merely spritely collection that was so dear to their hearts. Their most designs in colorful palettes that seem appealing in the treasured pieces came to the museum only a few less formal context of twenty-first-century lifestyles. months before Clare’s death, but Gene was able to In fact, they served on aristocratic tables of the visit and appreciate the exhibition and the research eighteenth century, often replacing silver during the that went into it before he too left us. This brochure reign of Louis XIV (1660–1715). The sophisticated is dedicated to their lasting legacy, of which the print and textile inspiration sources, especially on Moustiers ceramics collection is part. the early pieces, would have been appreciated by the educated clientele at whom they were aimed, but the ceramics’ color and choice of subjects would have Sarah D. Coffin Plate, ca. 1750; Manufactured by Olérys and Laugier’s pottery factory (Moustiers Sainte-Marie, France); appealed to all. The ceramics continued to be popular Curator and Head, Product Design and Decorative Arts Decorated by Joseph Fouque (French, active 1739); Tin-glazed earthenware; H × diam.: 3.2 × 25.4 cm (1 ¼ in. × 10 in.); Gift of Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw, 2008-40-3 later, during a time when the newly created porcelain Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum 2 3 ENTERTAINMENT FOR THE TABLE: but also supported a national industry and patriotically THE WHIMSY AND LUXURIANCE OF demonstrated one’s commitment to the king’s military FANCY OF MOUSTIERS CERAMICS program. Entrepreneurial pottery owners pursued regional clientele, as evidenced by dining services with REBEKAH S. POLLOCK the arms of influential Provençal families. A wineglass cooler (fig. 1) produced at the Olérys and Laugier factory of Moustiers was part of a larger service commissioned How did the small village of Moustiers Sainte-Marie, for Jean-Baptiste Victor de Rochechouart, Marquis de dramatically perched on the cliffs of the Alpes-de- Blainville (1712–1771), who lived in southeastern France. Haute-Provence, become one of France’s major centers The Rochechouart family is one of the oldest noble lines producing faience—tin-glazed earthenware—during in the country, and its members were well connected the eighteenth century? Its success can be attributed at the royal court. The Marquis was the nephew, once partly to the natural resources of the region: fresh removed, to Madame de Montespan, mistress to Louis water, good clay for potting, and abundant wood to fire XIV. The Olérys service shows his arms with the chivalric in kilns. Moustiers pottery decorators fueled demand by Order of Saint Louis. Even with his royal connections, the developing motifs that would become widely imitated Marquis ate from faience. Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Fig. 1. Wineglass cooler-rinser or confiturier (jam pot), 1739–49; by other factories. Using grand feu (high-firing) colors Marquise de Pompadour, the mistress to Louis XV and Manufactured by Olérys and Laugier’s pottery factory (Moustiers Sainte- Marie, France); Possibly decorated by Jean-François Pelloquin (French); Tin- derived from metal oxides, decorators painted these an influential patron of the arts, owned a blue and white glazed earthenware; H × diam.: 10.7 × 10 cm (4 × 3 in.); Gift of Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw, 2006-27-11 motifs onto a white surface—often compared to a blank service produced at the Clérissy factory decorated canvas—created by the tin glaze applied to the clay. with her personal armorial of three towers. A dish from Faience decorations were drawn from print sources, and this service is in the collection of the Musée national were partly inspired by and coordinated with chintz— de Céramique de Sèvres. Nearly four hundred pieces Indian cotton fabrics with white grounds being produced of faience were listed in an inventory drawn after the for the European market and used in interiors. The Marquise’s death in 1764.1 Tin-glazed earthenware is enormous popularity of cotton threatened the French sometimes viewed as the provincial cousin of porcelain, Fig. 3. Print, Design for Grotesque Ornament, ca. 1680; Jean Bérain the Elder silk industry, prompting the ban of imported chintz from but it is evident that in the early eighteenth century, (French, 1640–1711); Etching and engraving on white laid paper; 38.6 × 24.3 cm (15 × 9 in. ); Bequest of Marian Hague, 1971-71-5 1686 to 1759. During this time, the decorative repertoire when the European porcelain industry was in its infancy, of Indian chintz motifs—flowers, insects, and exotic the most elite and influential figures chose faience figures—appeared on faience from Moustiers. as a fashionable luxury through which to distinguish established other factories, contributing to the rise of themselves. faience in the region. A footed tazza based on a silver When King Louis XIV issued a series of edicts requiring form (fig. 2) shows a light and airy decoration in the French nobility to melt their silver services to fund The Clérissy factory at Moustiers achieved a degree style of Jean Bérain the Elder (1640–1711), a designer the nation’s war efforts (from 1689 to 1709), faience of technical excellence that ranks the factory among and engraver whose influence can be traced across manufacturers were quick to provide elegant ceramic the greatest French faience potteries at the turn the French decorative arts. Bérain’s compositions services to fill the void. France had not yet learned of the eighteenth century. The factory, founded in of delicate interlacing grotesques were adapted the secret to making porcelain, and imported Asian 1679 by Pierre Clérissy (ca. 1651–1728), employed for monochrome blue tablewares at the Clérissy porcelains were so expensive as to be limited to royal talented decorators, many of whom later migrated and manufactory beginning in 1710. Pouncing, a technique Fig. 2. Tazza, ca. 1720; Style of Jean Bérain the Elder (French, 1640–1711); Manufactured by Clérissy Factory (Moustiers Sainte-Marie, France); Tin-glazed and aristocratic collectors. Members of the nobility of applying a pattern by piercing a paper with small dots earthenware; H × diam.: 6 × 30.5 cm (2 ⅜ × 12 in.); Gift of Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw, 2008-40-5 and other wealthy patrons chose faience, a more and rubbing loose charcoal into the holes to transfer 1 Jean Cordey, Inventaire des biens de Madame de Pompadour, rédigé après accessible material that not only resembled porcelain, son décès (Paris: Lefrançois, 1939), 34–35. a design onto clay, was used in decorations based on 4 5 print engravings. The intricate designs and fantastic figures in Bérain’s grotesque designs (fig. 3) have counterparts in Clérissy faience, which was widely admired and copied by French manufacturers in Marseille, Lyon, and Nevers, as well as in Spain and Italy. Because of the motif’s popularity and the rarity of signed pottery, it can be difficult to attribute Bérain-style faience to a particular factory; it is the exceptionally fine lines and control of the blue glaze that distinguishes the pottery of Clérissy. A pair of wine coolers (fig. 4) display a network of decorations as crisp as their probable sources—Bérain engravings appear in a palette of blue and white inspired by Chinese porcelain. With the increasing trade brought by the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) and British East India Company, Asian porcelain imports grew in Europe, influencing local production. Dutch Fig. 5. Vase (Delft, Netherlands), ca. 1700; Tin-glazed earthenware; 32.5 × 15 manufacturers of tin-glazed earthenware—called × 15 cm (12 × 5 ⅞ × 5 ⅞ in.); Bequest of Walter Phelps Warren, 1986-61-34 delftware in the Netherlands and England—copied the imported porcelain and developed original lace-like patterns resembling panels of drapery (fig.